Family--New York City 1 c. 1949

Robert Frank made this black and white photograph, "Family--New York City 1", by seemingly recording his domestic life as a set of film stills, contact sheets where you can see the traces and indexicality of the medium. Here's a guy who’s thinking like a painter, really feeling his way through the medium. Maybe he woke up one day, or many days, and thought I want to see what it looks like to make images of my family. Each frame is a layer of intention and chance, and I bet he kept some and discarded others. I can imagine Frank playing with composition, light, and shadow, each one adding another layer to this intimate portrait. Photography is about framing; what to include, what to cut out? It's all a gesture, a way of saying, "Look at this." He has framed his family life as a poignant, personal narrative. This approach reminds me of other image-makers who have experimented with photographic sequence and the passage of time. I mean, all image makers are in conversation, right? And Robert Frank is talking to us here.